MrQwest

Project Bubble

22 January 10

I have a passion for the web. I do enjoy designing & developing websites and have been doing this since 1998. In the past couple of years, as I’ve moved into a more “freelancing” capacity during my spare time, I’ve been on the hunt for a nice & easy invoicing system.

I’m well aware that there are many different options online such as FreshBooks but I was after something simpler. I don’t do a lot of freelance work simply because of lack of time – so the time I do have, I like to dedicate to my existing clients.

It then seems silly to spend x amount each month on an invoicing tool to keep track of my work & invoicing if I might only issue one invoice every 6 weeks!

So I ended up making an excel invoice, and then issuing them as & when I needed. It still wasn’t ideal though.

All that changed about a month ago when I found ProjectBubble via twitter.

Project Bubble is a really easy-to-use and fun tool for managing unlimited projects, clients, and invoices. Best of all, it’s free!

After seeing many invoicing apps charging for their services, I was slightly dubious about what ProjectBubble could offer but I jumped in for a closer look. The blurb was right. It is an easy-to-use app for keeping track of your clients, the projects for each client & the invoicing you do!

I’ve been using it for the last month and have also moved all my invoicing over from 2009 into the app!

I’m not using it to it’s full potential, but I currently create a client complete with contact details. I then create a project and assign it to the client. Each project requires tasks so I add a couple of these. Here is where you assign either a fixed cost (ie: purchase fonts or stock photography at £30) or set the task as billable time (ie: £30 p/h x 7hrs = £210).

Once all the info has been setup, you simply tick off the tasks you’ve done & then head to the Invoices tab where you can raise an invoice for your client which is all nicely formatted. You can customise the invoice with your own logo too which is a nice touch. Another nice feature which has just been pushed through is that you can add discounts to the cost which is always a nice touch for repeat clients.

Once you’ve raised the invoice, you can e-mail it to your client and this gives them the opportunity to pay the invoice online using paypal. Or you could print the invoice & send it in the post… but seriously, it’s 2010!

The invoice will then sit in your invoices tab highlighted in red to say it’s overdue until you mark it as paid!

And that’s it – or well at least that it’s to the extent of what I’m using ProjectBubble for. It’s continually being updated with new features too (project collaboration has just been released!) so I’m sure ProjectBubble will fall into my work flow a lot more over the coming months!

Overall though, the app has been a joy to use and has made my life a lot easier in terms of the invoicing and ‘business side’ of things.

My only gripe with ProjectBubble (and it’s a very very small gripe), when you email an invoice to a client, the email comes from ProjectBubble and not from me. But you do have the option to download the invoice in PDF format, so you could in fact, download the invoice & email it manually from your own email addy with your own body text too!

See, I told you it was a small gripe! And I also told the guys at @ProjectBubble via twitter and less than 10 minutes later, the gripe was fixed. Now emails sent to clients come from the user! Now that’s what I call service!

If you’re on the lookout for a free web-based management & invoicing application, then you must give ProjectBubble a go!